Herein lie the movies that are above the line – these are the B- movies, the “oh yeah, that was cute, I liked that” movies, the ones that you go ahead and leave on the tv because nothing better is on and you’re only half-watching anyway.

#105: Azrael (2024)

Samara Weaving gets this weird little virtually-no-dialogue future horror flick just over the line. But really, you should see Ready or Not or The Babysitter or even Guns Akimbo instead. Much more fun.

#104: Warlock (1989)

Julien Sands! Richard E. Grant! Terrible 80s CGI! I have a soft spot for this kind of thing, so here we are.

#103: Hitman: Agent 47

This learned the key lesson from The Matrix: if your lead can’t really show emotion convincingly, just have the character be super-stoic so that the inability leans into the character and it seems like a choice.

Cheaply done but decent action and some style to it. I knew it was based on a video game (I assume a FPS) but I didn’t have to know anything about it – not that the plot was remotely complicated or anything.

#102: Pearl Harbor (2001)

Awful lot of kissing in this historical war epic, gol’darn it.

Telling the story of Pearl Harbor primarily as a story about the love triangle between Affleck, Hartnett, and Beckinsale. I mean we all make a lot of choices in this life and far be it from me to judge someone simply for taking a historical tragedy with massive loss of life and make a huge Hollywood epic with all that as a backdrop for romance.

Having said that, it was done pretty well and the combat stuff was well done.

#101: Wolfs (2024)

Very upsetting that this wasn’t better. It could’ve been better! It should’ve been better!

I can’t really even explain why it wasn’t. We know that these two can have great chemistry, we know that they can each do this kind of movie, we definitely know that they are quality, likable actors. The script wasn’t bad, the other performances weren’t bad, There was just something missing. There was no heart I guess? Maybe the sequel would be better now that there are actual stakes that we are aware of for these guys?

Up Next: It’s Always the Same, It’s Just a Shame, That’s All (Part II)

#111: What Josiah Saw (2021)

Robert Patrick plays a solid sonofabitch (and quite possibly worse) patriarch, but this really just flounders along with no real objective. There are two big reveals. One that was obvious from about 5 minutes into the movie and the other that was just a total head-scratcher. So the two main characters were not all pure and innocent…..so? So these deserve what happened to them? Does it make the third persons quest for…..revenge/understanding/love/whatever more poignant somehow?

#110: Tenebrae (1982)

I dunno man, I think maybe giallo and I were just not meant to get along, I obviously have no problems with the subject matter – in fact a more or less straight adaptation of Argentino’s Suspiria was one of my favorite movies of the last few years. But something about this particular style leaves me cold.

#109: Role Play (2024)

Kaley Cuoco and David Oyewolo are both charming (who would’ve guessed that Cuoco would be the breakout star of Big Bang Theory), and I will not say a word against Bill Nighy. But this is definitely the lesser of the various “Retired Secret Agents Who Got Married and Settled Down Has to Come Out of Hiding to Protect Their Family” movies. I think they came up with the idea and figured they would let the cast just take care of making it interesting.

#108: Le Voyage Dans la Lune (1902)

I always struggle with where to place these ancient movies. Obviously a major breakthrough in the medium and it is interesting to see how this stuff was done 120 years ago. But, you know, the plot is pretty silly.

#107: Knight & Day (2010)

Shockingly low for a Tom Cruise movie, but the tone is really out of whack here. I see that it is allegedly an “action movie satire” but I don’t see that at all – it just seems like a typical jokey action movie, not broad enough or biting enough to actually seem satirical. So it comes off as flat.

#106: After Hours (1985)

Just couldn’t get on the right wavelength of this one, despite a Manic Pixie Dream Girl performance from Rosanna Arquette, who I had quite the crush on from various other movies made around this same time. Paul is just too much of a sad sack and this is too much of “crazy shit happens to him” as opposed to him trying to do anything or even like being interested in it. I mean, it was basically fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Up Next: It’s Always the Same, It’s Just a Shame, That’s All (Part I)

#118: Road House (2024)

The scene starting with the above is the clear high point, both because it’s insane and hysterical and because it doesn’t use any of the terrible motion-smoothed AI action garbage that is all too frequently used. Conor McGregor, by various accounts, is not a great person, but he has a future in acting (being the bad guy anyway) if he wants it.

Aside from that, Jake Gylenhall is far too jacked for comfort and the whole thing just doesn’t really work. The fight scenes, which should be half of the focus of the movie, are generally poor. The character work is decent though.

#117: Glass (2019)

Advances several spots for Sam’s Prince tribute.

You can really tell watching this that Bruce Willis was not right. Highly unfortunate and sad that he couldn’t have just retired when things got bad for him. McAvoy is still a ton of fun in his role though.

#116: The Bricklayer (2023)

I like Aaron Eckhart but…well, to be honest, I cannot remember a damn thing about this movie. I have vague memories that I didn’t like it, which is enough (combined with its obvious lack of memorability) to place it here on the list.

#115: Smile 2 (2024)

Functional, but not nearly as creepy as the original. Also the reverse “it was all a dream” move isn’t nearly as novel as they think it is.

#114: Twisted (2004)

Painfully predictable. The one exception is the completely nonsensical romance between Judd and Andy Garcia that I assume was forced in by the studio (although it’s not like the script was well written or anything so maybe it was just ham handed all the way along). Our boy Samuel not doing great on today’s list.

#113: Alien: Covenant (2017)

Yes, it’s another Alien movie about these fuckin’ guys. Part of the beauty of the original Alien was that (1) it’s just this freaking force of nature, built to kill, that needs no (and has no) explanation, and (2) it had its evolutionary advantages but if they could somehow be overcome then you could beat it.

Now we have two stupid movies with competing versions of the backstory that we never asked for, and it’s doing crap like surviving being exposed to the vacuum of space and crashing into planets. Come on man.

Still ranked this high because of H.R. Giger and because even with a stupid character Fassbender is still fun to watch.

#112: Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Look, nobody is more surprised by this than me. We’re all looking for the guy who did this.

Apparently I do have some standards, even for a genre and an actor I adore. This is aimless and pointless and even Kathryn Newton can’t save her one-note character, who is frankly stupid and uninsteresting.

Up Next: Dance Into the Fire, To Fatal Sounds of Broken Dreams (Part V – The Last One!)

#124: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

The worst in a generally amusing series. The pre-volleyball scene above is redonkulous, the whole Davey Jones thing is trying to be scary and momentous and silly all at the same time, and fails on all fronts. Depp seems bored, and the film tries to swerve into making Keira Knightly into a badass but if she’s up to it it’s not evident in this movie. (Watch Black Doves though, she’s really good in that.)

#123: You’ll Never Find Me (2023)

All tone and suspense, which is kind of ruined when you can see the big twist coming from a mile away. A few different decisions and it could’ve been really quite good, but when you have two people staring silently at each other for long periods it doesn’t really work if you are just waiting for them to get to the point.

#122: The Boy Behind the Door (2020)

Another one that could’ve been interesting but wasn’t. Nothing particularly noteworthy in this child-abduction….thriller? I guess thriller is right? You never really expect motivations from people who would, you know, abduct children, but here the bad guys are bad because they’re bad and it’s never even hinted at why they wanted the boys (again, there is not a good answer here, but c’mon).

#121: Red Dragon (2002)

Total misfire. How they could only create this when they had Tony Hopkins, Ed Norton, and Ralph Fiennes is stunning. The performances are fine but the movie is lifeless and Fiennes is totally wrong for Dolarhyde – way too pretty.

Obviously this remake only exists because of the massive success of Lambs, but they should’ve taken the hint from how long it took them to get this done and dropped it. They were never going to top the predecessor (which will be coming up in a while).

#120: The Grudge (2020)

As said before, watching the US remakes of classic Japanese horror is almost always a mistake. The one solid moment on this is the above scene that was spoiled on all of the promotion for the movie anyway. Just watch the originals, people.

#119: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

You might think from the above that this is pretty rockin’ but a sad baby Kong plays a huge role and our boy G is left mostly to just shoot nuke bolts or whatever while Kong and his Thanos Glove takes on Frozen Godzilla and Evil Kong. I dunno man, just a lot of nonsense without much interesting actually happening and the fight scenes weren’t even very good. Excellent sound though.

Up Next: Dance Into the Fire, To Fatal Sounds of Broken Dreams (Part IV)

#130: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

The 2024 winner of the Gus-Van-Sant’s-Psycho Award For Achievement in Pointlessness.

Seriously, I don’t know what I expected. You can obviously still tell a compelling story when everyone knows the ending but to do that you need some story to tell and some reason to tell it beyond “I dunno maybe we can strip mine this legend for parts” or “oooohhh real scary.” This even fails on the scary part. Good makeup though.

#129: American Assassin (2017)

Dylan O’Brien is a charisma black hole and the plot makes me feel dirty just thinking about it (average kid becomes uber-commando assassin targeting various……uhhh…..Middle Eastern targets after terrorists murder his fiancé). Should’ve thought a bit harder about this before thinking I could use a nice action shoot-em-up.

#128: The Parent Trap (1961)

So look I try to take movies on their own terms and be open to them but this is just wayyyyy too family-friendly for me. Just cloying. They did do a pretty good job with the FX for doubling up Haylay Mills, but the early-live-action Disneyness plus the terrible gender politics are too much.

#127: Predators (2010)

Yes the above is a real scene from a real movie. Larry Fishburn! Adrien Brody! WALTON GOGGINS! And I like most of the other Predator movies (especially the recent Prey). But this is just a mess – space portals, Predator dogs, human slave camps on the hunting world, just a bunch of garbage randomly thrown together.

#126: From Beyond (1986)

Sometimes a B-movie is just a B-movie.

#125: Fracture (2007)

Sir Anthony is usually a lot of fun but here he fails to walk the balance between hamming it up and being hyper-capably menacing, coming off as just as asshole. Really made me realize what a triumph Hannibal Lecter was and how much work went into that performance and was clearly lacking here.

Up Next: Dance Into the Fire, To Fatal Sounds of Broken Dreams (Part III)

These are the bad, naughty movies that should feel bad because they know what they have done. They’re not terrible but I cannot imagine recommending them to anyone under any circumstances.

#136: Lift (2024)

The latest lazy Netflix template where a bunch of highly-specialized weirdos, each with their own thing that they are the best at in the entire world and their own precise quirk/twitch. In theory films like this could still be interesting but only of they put in a certain minimum of effort. Slickly made though, so I guess that’s something.

#135: Infinite (2021)

See above. Very difficult to distinguish between these movie-shaped substances. Marky Mark is more fun than Kevin Hart, but the plot of this is basically a shitty version of The Incrementalists, a series of books I really enjoyed and that investigates the questions raised here really well instead of just posing them, smirking at the camera, and moving on into a frenetic fight scene.

#134: The Union (2024)

See above, again. Are we sensing a theme this week? Maybe “Crappy Formulaic Netflix Films You’re Only Supposed to Half-Watch” should be its own category?

Markie and Halle both at least half-try so this is the best of the threesome I suppose. Just thinking about these movies is just making me tired though. Ugh.

#133: The Dark Tower (2017)

As much as I dislike the trend of having films broken down into multiple parts, taking 4,250+ written pages and turning it into a 95 minute film is quite the head-scratcher. Nothing really makes sense and to the limited extent that it does it’s just stupid. How do you make Iris Elba uninteresting? How dare you.

#132: Pulse (2006)

I really, really need to stop watching American remakes of Japanese and Korean horror classics. I was lured in by Kristen Bell and Wes Craven but this was still a pretty pointless and silly remake that entirely misses the point of the original.

#131: Red One (2024)

Yes, that means that everything before this was worse than the Santa Clause as an International Spy or Whatever movie with jacked JK Simmons. And Dwayne Johnson as an elf. Get it? Get It?? GET IT???? HAHAHAHAHA ARE YOU LAUGHING YET????????

At least this was original in a sense? I guess?

Up Next: Dance, Into the Fire, To Fatal Sounds of Broken Dreams (Part II)

#141: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

A dreary waste of time and potential. Replaying the same incidental stuff that was in the first one (the shrunken head guys, the table model, the same afterlife stuff) entirely misses the point that it was the spirit of inventiveness that we all loved. This is boring and depressing. At least Keaton seemed to be having an ok time.

#140: Brain Dead (1990)

Could’ve been a decent movie but was right in the dead zone of taking itself too seriously to be truly funny and being too stupid to be actually interesting.

#139: Tau (2018)

Maika Monroe’s worst performance in a movie that lacks originality yet is very impressed with itself – is the automated house more human than the psycho guy who programmed it? I WONDER!!!

#138: Hollywood Homicide (2003)

Just a failure as a movie. They are clearly trying for a Beverly Hills Cop / Lethal Weapon kind of mismatched buddy-cop thing, but neither the characters nor the mystery are interesting, Hartnett is not a good actor, and the tone is all over the place. So much is unbelievable (in a stupid way) throughout the movie it’s just irritating.

#137: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Just what we all wanted, the origin story for Blank Manta.

Lost almost all of the original’s sense of fun in a flurry of nonsensical unmotivated garbage. Boooo.

Up Next: Dance Into the Fire, To Fatal Sounds of Broken Dreams

#147: Argyle (2024)

Hooo boy. On merit this disaster really belongs lower, but my lovely wife took me to see this on a really bad day and that kindness makes it impossible for me to rate it any lower.

But man oh man is this bad. Even Sam Rockwell can’t save this bizarre monstrosity overly jammed with a bunch of stuff that maybe sounded cool in the pitch meeting but really should’ve been shut down during filming. Samuel L. Jackson also made me really sad with his clearly disinterested performance.

#146: Watchmen: Chapter One (2024)

So, what is the point exactly?

This is so faithful to the source material that it feels entirely pointless. The graphics are just like the comics, which is impressive I guess, but I could imagine the images moving in my head already you know?

I get it, it’s a classic book, and the live-action movie had a LOT of issues, but there is just no need for this at all.

#145: Salem’s Lot (2024)

See above.

Seriously, this adds absolutely nothing to anything. I guess it’s perfectly fine but this incredible spooky story did not need the 2024 graphic gore update and they didn’t change anything else at all. Just barely not worth changing the channel.

#144: V/H/S 85 (2023)

I enjoyed the first couple of V/H/S movies – Phase I Clinical Trials and Safe Haven from V/H/S 2 were particular standouts. But this shows that they have really kind of run out of gas. Even the interesting ideas (eg a group of teenagers kind of accidentally become immortal zombies) go nowhere or, even worse, get dead-ended into a stupid meaningless resolution.

#143: Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire (2023)

Theoretically original? Does Fan Fic count as original?

Even the production quality was fan fic level. I wonder how long the movie would be if the slow mo scenes were all played at regular speed.

#142: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Yeah, just not for me. Waaaaayyyy too gross, especially the sex stuff and the maggots….or okay maybe all of it really. No thank you.

Up Next: ATWWHTARNJTTYOAWB (Part III)

Right right right so it’s January 20, we’re off to a great quick start.

I was obviously living life right once again, as I was rewarded for all of my life choices by not having watched anything truly god-awfully atrocious. I mean, sure, this group of movies was terrible but they weren’t things that were developed for the purpose of directly assaulting my will to live like The Nightingale or Rise of Skywalker. So yay for me!

#154: Idiocracy (2006)

Yeah yeah yeah I get it there is definitely something to the idea of the race to the bottom and there are a couple of decent jokes. And Terry Crews is great. But ultimately this is (presumably deliberately) just stuuuuuuuupid humor and a frankly criminal waste of Maya Rudolph.

#153: Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow (1993)

Angelica Jolie’s first “movie,” this direct-to-video (remember when that was a thing?) masterpiece barely counts as a film. Bad fight choreography, terrible-to-nonexistent F/X, and let us not speak of the script. Too bad it sank her promising career before it even started.

#152: Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

No, wait, can we slow it down and really focus on the grain please? Luxuriate in it. Rub it all over ourselves. Mmmm yeah just like that.

I don’t feel that I need to add anything further to the discourse here honestly. That would be letting the movie win.

Okay, no, I have to say – why did they call her The Scargiver *before* she gave anyone a scar? They have the big dramatic thing where she gives that dude a scar but he is calling her that before? What? WHAT???

#151: Night Swim (2024)

THE POOL THAT KILLS

Frankly, they didn’t go nearly hard enough with this. The pool was restoring sick dad but had to claim lives to do it, yadda yadda yadda. Cursed wellspring, etc etc. Legacy of eeeevvvvvil. But no vicious beasties and even the glimpses of cruel spirits are saved until the very end.

If you aren’t sure if this is the sort of movie where the rejuvenated dad sacrifices himself to save his innocent children then you are an idiot and there is no hope for you.

#150: Mayhem (2017)

A frankly boring take on the far superior The Belko Experiment. Starring Stephen Yuen and Samara Weaving! I love them! But they are incredibly dull in this and there is nothing inventive or original. Bleh.

#149: Peeping Tom (1960)

Allegedly a classic and I guess they understood a lot less about this stuff 65 years ago but boy this is terribly misguided on the psychology, the murders are ludicrous (he got them to just stand still while carrying that huge thing and stabbing them with it?), and the old-movie slow pacing really doesn’t work for me at all in this.

#148: Employee of the Month (2006)

Horrendous gender politics (especially for a freaking 2006 movie), a meh script and….well look it would be mean to criticize Jessica Simpson’s acting, as she was hired to look real pretty and be kinda famous she does that just fine.

This does have probably my favorite Dax Shepard performance, as he plays a credible jackwagon. So he has that going for him.

Up Next: ATWWHTARNJTTYOAWB (Part II)

If it feels like we just finished this, that’s because we just finished this.

But nobody ever said that the movie ranking business was easy and this is the life I chose so here we are.

My records indicate that I only saw a paltry 154 movies for the first time, so maybe we’ll be done for the year sometime this Summer? Only time will tell!

In what is indubitably a good omen, I’m not quite feeling up to starting the rankings today so I’ll just do my traditional* ranking of my favorite tv shows from 2024.

* If you do something twice it’s a tradition right? Right? Good, I’m glad we’re agreed on that.

10. Batman: Caped Crusader

I missed The Animated Series back in the day so this was particularly novel for me, although I believe true bat-heads* liked it too. Fun take.

* That is the technical term.

9. From s1

Enjoyable horror mystery-box. Like most of its kind it starts to get lost in its own mythos in the second season but the first one had a good combination of telling us just enough while keeping everything suspect.

8. The Traitors s1

Alan Cumming is a delight, the gameplay is different enough, and the players are interesting. Further comment withheld in case one of you actually hasn’t seen it and might be interested.

7. Fallout

Big genre fun and Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets represent what what!) is terrific.

6. The Night Agent

Just good old fashioned spy thriller. And the entire world isn’t at risk even, which was pleasantly novel.

5. Slow Horses s4

They keep making seasons of Slow Horses, I will keep watching them and they will make this list every time.

4. The Diplomat s1

Probably benefitting from residual love for The Americans and Keri Russell but the first season had intrigue and good characters and fabulously low stakes.

3. Jury Duty

Incredible that this worked out and it ended up working out better than they could have possibly expected. Almost certainly ruined the whole thing for any possible second season but wow was this awesome as is. Ronald is who we should all be*, and major props to James Marsden too.

* Please never tell me his politics. I do not want to know.

2. Shogun

Yeah I don’t have anything to say that you haven’t already heard.

1. Ripley

I love the movie version but this shocked me at how good it was. Somehow the black and white even made it better instead of being overly pretentious like I expected. I really need to read the book I guess.

Up Next: IT BEGINS